


Gonna Be Different this Time

by cofax



Series: Life During Wartime [13]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Apocafic, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the end of the mytharc.  Mulder and Scully, Skinner and Frohike, at the end of it all.  Final installment of the Life During Wartime series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A (very) brief summary of the story to date: when the aliens attacked, there was enough notice for a few who were in the loop to get out of town. Mulder and Scully were warned in time, and they avoided capture by both the aliens and the military directed by Spender, who was of course in league with the aliens. They didn't avoid the designer plagues that swept the world right after the plague, though: Scully's mother Maggie died of an engineered tuberculosis before they found sanctuary with the Gunmen in an old Army base outside of Louisville. Skinner found them there, as well, and with information he brought, they began to plan a counter-offensive. This story is set about three months after the end of _Fimbulwinter_. Other notes at end.

T minus three hours.

It wasn't the smartest thing she'd ever done. There was a good argument to be made that it was the stupidest damn thing she'd ever attempted, and she was sure Mulder would agree. Except that Mulder wasn't here. Which was, in some sense, the point. Mulder hadn't thought it was important enough to come, so here she was, following a 14-year-old telepath into a closely-guarded military base looking for someone she wasn't entirely sure was here at all.

When Dana Scully took a risk, she took a big one.

Her gun was a welcome presence at the small of her back, even though using it would ruin what little advantage they had. 

Scully was crouched behind a tree forty yards from the fence, just north of the Rosemont Avenue gate to Fort Detrick. It was dark and cold; March in Maryland was only marginally preferable to February in Indiana. She waited another minute, then peered around the trunk of the tree. There wasn't much to be seen but the bulk of the satellite dishes and communications towers slicing against the starred sky. There was a tiny flash at the base of the fence, then a shadow moved, and Scully heard a low hissing whisper.

This was it. Scully tightened the strap of her pack and sped across the open ground to drop crouched next to Gibson. "Are we in?" she asked in a breath.

The boy nodded, and pulled back on the chain-link fence. It was sliced cleanly along the post, leaving an opening just large enough for someone small to slip through. She crawled through first, then held the opening for Gibson, her arm straining against the weight of the metal. She checked her watch: they had roughly an hour, to do this, and get out and back to the house before the other team.

"Where now?"

"This way," Gibson said, and gestured straight ahead with his chin. He led her for about a quarter of a mile, scuttling from tree to tree next to the road. The dim starlight illuminated the ubiquitous brick of mid-Atlantic architecture, as they moved towards a conglomeration of buildings several hundred yards away. There was no traffic on the roads; most of the troops had moved out this morning, heading east toward Baltimore. Scully had crouched next to Mulder on the roof of the house and watched the trucks go by on the interstate. Now, if she listened carefully, she imagined she could hear the distant pops of gunfire. She wondered how Carvalho was, then realized she'd do better to worry about Mulder and Skinner--and then stopped, because they were at the corner of the building.

Gibson motioned at her to stay in place, and edged around the corner of the building. There was a light streaming across the sidewalk from what must be a glass doorway, and Scully caught a hint of tinny music. Guard post. Gibson crept closer to the doorway, clinging to the wall, staying out of the light. About 10 yards from the doorway he stopped, and stood still for a long time. 

Scully chewed her lip as she watched him: he was curled forward, his hands twitching, his shoulders hunched. Finally he stiffened, and then began to edge backwards. When he got around the corner he nodded, and led the way to a small metallic door on the other side of the building from the guard post. Gibson fumbled at the keypad next to the door, while Scully kept a wary eye on their surroundings. 

The building complex was U-shaped, and they were on the inside of one of the long arms of the U. There was very little light on this side of the building, but Scully could see that the sky above the courtyard was blocked by something large, something with a round outline. She cocked her head and stepped out from the wall. It wasn't--but it was. It was a huge metal ball, maybe 40 feet in diameter, suspended in midair on eight solid metal posts. A catwalk spiraled up to a spot on the far side from the courtyard floor about 20 yards away. It was one of the oddest things she'd ever seen on a military base, and it made her twitch uneasily.

Gibson nudged her shoulder, and she turned to follow him through the door. 

His glasses flashing in the dim light, Gibson grinned at her. "I told you I could get you in, Miss Scully." He shoved his fingers into the pockets of his filthy pants and rolled his shoulders. For a moment he looked like the high school boy he ought to be, if a short one.

She nodded. "So you did. But can you--"

"Find your brother? Sure." And he urged her down the dark stairs, pausing only to close the door quietly behind them.

**+~+~+**

**[Six days earlier]**

 

"That's the plan?"

"Yes," said Jack, and shifted in his seat.

"That's _all_ of the plan?"

"Mulder--" said Frohike, but Mulder cut him off.

"No, I want to be clear on this. We really think this our only option." He stalked across the garage, his mind seething. He turned to face Scully, who was seated incongruously on a folding lounge chair, crammed in between the lawn mower and a bin full of old ski gear.

"Scully, does this make any sense to you?"

She nodded, her face pale but composed. "I don't see that we have any choice. We have to shut down the virus distribution system. And this is where it starts. It makes _sense_ , Mulder. Fort Detrick has been a research center for disease and biological warfare for decades, and Krycek and Carvalho's information confirms it. We have to do whatever we can to shut it down."

Mulder pulled a hand down over his eyes. He'd been scouting forward and had missed most of the strategy meeting; it was a shock to see that Jack, Skinner, and Frohike were all in agreement. As for Scully, well, things were better between them, but she'd traded her sharp edge for resolution when Ari died. It wasn't the same.

He turned too sharply towards Jack, and put his hand on the work-bench for balance. The garage was dim and unheated: only a Coleman lamp on the hood of the jeep lit the space. Frohike was slumped against the wall near Scully, while Skinner and Jack sat on the steps leading up into their twitchy host's kitchen. Their host had gone to bed hours ago. Mulder wished he could too. He was cold, and bone tired.

"You think Carvalho can be trusted to do this?" he asked Jack, looking for reassurance he knew the other man couldn't give.

"Yes, I do," Jack said. "Paul's an opportunist, but he's not a fool. Far more units than anyone expected to have mutinied. It's not absolute chaos out there yet, but it will be by year's end. He knows he's better off committing to us now than waiting. If he gets in first--" Jack just shrugged instead of finishing the sentence. 

Despite the hour, and the weeks of travel, Jack didn't look noticeably different than he had the first time Mulder had met him. He was still neat, clean, and military, even on an uneven stairway in a reluctant underground railroad stop ten miles west of Harper's Ferry. Mulder wanted to hate him but he didn't have the option. They needed Jack, for his competence and his contacts. And because no one else had the credibility Jack did, no one else could point three federal agents, several dozen anarchic hackers, and a handful of scientists in the same direction and get the job done.

That was, after all, what it was about. Getting the job done--once they agreed what the fuck "the job" was.

Mulder rolled his head from side to side, and looked again at Scully. She nodded, her eyes dim but decisive. It was still shaky, depending on too many variables: Carvalho's reliance, split-second timing, the reaction of the base commander at Detrick, and this team's own ability to move fast, silent, and effectively. 

"Okay," he said finally, and saw Skinner let out a sigh of relief. "How much time do we have, and what supplies do we need before we get there?"

**+~+~+**

They couldn't take the luxury of staying another day in this place, even if their host had allowed them; now they were on a time-table. They had three days to get to Frederick. Three days, for what had been a two-hour drive. That was then, this was now, and Scully couldn't sleep.

Rather than crowd onto the living-room floor inside the house, Mulder had commandeered the rear of the jeep for them: with the back seat pulled all the way forward, there was almost enough room for the two of them to curl up comfortably on the floor in the back. It was cramped, but it was as much privacy as they'd been able to realize since leaving the ammunition plant three weeks ago.

The mated sleeping bags were a stroke of genius; at the least it gave Scully the chance to share in Mulder's warmth. He was wrapped around her like her own private furnace. If she'd known how much she could have saved on heating bills, she might have come to his bed years before. 

Or not. The past was a country she couldn't return to.

Jack was going to come banging on the door at sunset, which was in only a few hours. The March sun streamed into the garage through the high side windows, but that wasn't what kept Scully awake. She'd gotten used to sleeping during the day again with more ease than she expected, or wanted. This was something else. 

She rolled over with some difficulty. They'd all lost weight, and despite the pads under them, the hard floor of the jeep made her joints ache. 

From here she could see Mulder's face clearly in the pale grey light. Scully sighed. In Indiana, he'd gained back some of the weight he'd lost in November, but his face was looking drawn again, weary and worn. She'd seen him looking at her, the past few weeks, when he thought she might not notice. She knew he was worried, but she couldn't help him.

She wasn't really here. Well, she was, but she could feel it in herself, could tell--something had gone away when Ari died under her hands. Mulder had survived, and for that she thanked God every day. But first Mom, and then Langly, and then Ari, and the look on Linda's face--it was too much. She wasn't a doctor anymore: she was an attendant to the dying. This trip to Detrick was her last chance to save someone, anyone, from the ruination that they had seen coming for years. But with every mile under their wheels she felt herself pulling farther away. Soon Mulder would be holding an empty shell, and she would be--she didn't know. Elsewhere.

Scully let her eyes close, and tried to think about anything else but the death of millions.

Just as she began to let herself relax into the warmth, and drift, there was a distinct _click_ , and then a slow creak. She felt Mulder stiffen next to her as her eyes flashed open. Fred Wilkins worked days at the local power plant; he wouldn't be back until after they left. And the rest of the team always respected their privacy during the daylight hours. 

Scully put her hand on Mulder's arm, saw his eyes meet hers. He motioned to the door with his eyes, and she nodded minutely.

"One," he said soundlessly. "Two, three."

On three they both rolled upwards. Still trapped in the sleeping bag, her legs hampered, Scully grabbed her weapon from the floor and brought it to bear as Mulder threw open the back door of the jeep.

"Stop right there!"

Scully had always prided herself on her intelligence, and her reaction speed. She had always beaten Charlie roundly at Jeopardy, and after that one disastrous Christmas, her father had forbidden her to play Trivial Pursuit at any family gathering. But she realized later that it took an unconscionable time to put a name to the young boy who stood gazing at them with unflappable calm.

Granted, he'd aged: they hadn't seen him in close to two years, and boys that age grow fast: he was nearly Scully's height now. The surgery scars, healed or not, were covered with a multi-colored wool hat with earflaps. But the thick glasses were the same, the unsettling posture, and the expression that indicated he knew far too much for the world's own comfort.

Scully blinked, and blinked again, and finally opened her mouth, to hear Mulder beat her to it.

"Gibson," he said, and his voice was cracked with amazement. "Gibson Praise."

**+~+~+**

Entering Frederick was like coming back into the warm halls of a house after being lost in the cold. They'd been traveling by night, scurrying from bolt-hole to hideout to Motel 6, their mismatched caravan accompanied sometimes by Humvees, other times by motorcycles. One memorable night their guide had been an old woman on horseback. Days had been quiet and strained as they slept and planned and reviewed maps tattered with wear.

The old house was only three miles from Fort Detrick. The windows were dark but the interior welcoming. Mulder saw antiques in the hallway and could tell there was soup in the pot on the woodstove, which warmed the room where they sat hunched over cups of weak herbal tea. He remembered Scully had spent time in Frederick, back in the days when antiquing was a pleasant way to spend a day. She'd come to Frederick more than once with her mother or her sister, walking the old streets coffee in hand, browsing through bookstores and curio shops.

Now the town, like the rest of the world, was silent and still after dark. The streets held no softly-lit bistros serving Californian wines and French cheeses. There wasn't a coffee bean to be had for hundreds of miles. Mulder didn't want to think about what had happened to the bookstores. Paper burns, after all. Hot and fast.

"Well, Doctor Scully?" Jack barked. Scully looked up from the delicate teacup in her hand. Gibson and Frohike were standing in the corner, peering at the books in the shelf next to the fireplace with their heads at identical angles. 

"I don’t think we have any choice," she answered. "We learned a lot from Newport--" She stopped as Frohike cast a glance at her, his eyes unreadable. "They're moving forward with the next round of disease, and medical facilities will be even less prepared for that than we were for the tuberculosis. Everyone's supplies are exhausted and the infrastructure is gone."

Skinner nodded. "There's no question of moving forward: Carvalho's committed, and Baltimore's in flames. Military units are revolting up and down the eastern seaboard."

"We're sure of this?" Mulder asked before swallowing the rest of his tea. It was bitter and lukewarm, probably made from weeds pulled from the garden. 

"It's good intel, Mulder," said Jack, and his voice had the sound of weary repetition. "Carvalho's taking a big risk, and his men are dying. We can't back out now."

Mulder waved a hand and dropped it back to the table. "I know, Jack. It's just--I'm afraid, okay? Newport was bad."

Nobody responded; there was nothing to be said. Newport had been worse than bad. Newport had been appalling, and the body count had been too high to be borne.

**+~+~+**

There was something she had forgotten. Something about the plan.

Equipment was all over the living room: guns stacked in the corner by the door, maps spread out over the table and weighted down with a battered green ham radio; packets of plastique incongruously piled on the seat of an antique armchair.

The plastique. Scully forced herself to consider it. Something at the back of her mind was unsettled by the explosives. There was--

"--something wrong, Scully?" Mulder rumbled in her ear, and she nearly jumped. It was gone, whatever it was.

"No, I was just--Mulder," she said suddenly, "whose idea was it to use explosives?"

He straightened, and she could sense his puzzlement in how he shifted his weight from one leg to another. "Jack's, I think," he said finally. "It was back at the Plant, before we headed east. You were at that meeting."

"Before we headed east" meant not long after Ari and Langley died, and Scully hadn't been at her best then. She had only the vaguest memory of those weeks. But she would never forget Linda's eyes when her daughter died.

"I think--" she began, and then stopped, as the pieces fell into place. "Oh, _shit_."

"What?" Mulder pulled her about to face him, but she was focused somewhere in the middle distance, running through the catastrophic possibilities.

"We need to talk to Jack," she said, still staring at the wall. _Thirty percent infection, fifty percent mortality rate. How many millions lived downwind of Fort Detrick?_

**+~+~+**

"You're telling me we can't blow the complex." Jack's voice was level, but he couldn't be happy. They'd been committed to this plan for weeks now.

"No." Of that she was certain. "An explosion would aerosolize the stockpile they've been developing there. It would spread all over the Eastern seaboard. Millions could die."

"Millions will die if we _don't_ stop them, Scully."

She shook her head. They had found Jack in the kitchen, holding a cold mug of ersatz coffee and staring out the windows at the late morning sun. His hands were almost the same color as the old farmhouse table. Scully wondered briefly how much wooden furniture in this city of antiques would survive the next year.

"No, she's right, Mulder." Jack pulled his hands over his face, and dropped them to the table again. The coffee cup sat forgotten. "This is too great a risk."

What were they to do? Carvalho was staging a dangerous and costly distraction for them. They couldn't back out now, or those lives would be lost for nothing. But what other alternatives were there to blowing up the complex?

"We can't blow it up," said Mulder, and she could hear it in his voice, the analysis happening, the images shuffling like cards in a dealer's hands. Looking for a royal flush. "What if we blow it _in_?"

"Implode it?" Scully frowned, and Mulder nodded. "I--I don't know. It's the force of the blast that's the problem, and I think even a confined explosion would--"

"Effayee," said Jack suddenly, slapping his hand down on the table. 

Scully blinked. Mulder looked as confused as she was.

"F, A, E," said Jack again, more clearly. "Fuel Air Explosion. It's a two-stage system: the air in the target area is permeated with a flammable gas, which is then ignited. Anything in the immediate target area is incinerated, but it doesn't have the outward pressure of a traditional explosion. It's not really a bomb, but it will destroy the building and everything inside."

That could work, Scully thought. She'd have to trust Jack's experience. But they were very short on time--

"Can we get one?" Mulder asked the crucial question for her.

Jack's shoulders raised fractionally, and then his chin dipped. "You know, I think we can. Carvalho left me a contact name, a light colonel at Muir Army Air Field in Pennsylvania. He might be able to pull this off."

"Might?" Scully let her skepticism show.

"Might," agreed Jack, and met her eyes. "Give me an hour."

An hour, and it was done. But not without risks--Carvalho's contact was, if possible, more paranoid than Carvalho himself. Jack had gotten a commitment for the FAE, but at a dangerous price. They were locked into the schedule. The bomb would be delivered at 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday. If anything went wrong, if the schedule slipped at all, they could be trapped at USAMRIID and incinerated.

Nobody liked it, but Scully had to admit that they had no other option. The original plan put millions of mid-Atlantic residents at risk from the unknown epidemics being cooked up in the demon's laboratory that was the Consortium's secret plague factory.

Now they were on a countdown, and the only way out was through.

**+~+~+**

The coffee . . . wasn't. Mulder gave a half-hearted stir to the brown liquid in his mug and replaced the old enamel pot on top of the wood stove. There was no power and no gas, of course, so all the cooking took place in the living room, and the stove was kept going day and night. They were lucky: there were three cords of wood stacked outside, and the stove was both well-maintained and efficient. It could have been worse.

It was late. The others had mostly gone to bed, wrapped in blankets in the cold bedrooms upstairs. Mulder sat down in the same chair Jack had occupied earlier that day, and stared out the same window. This house was surrounded by trees, although it wasn't far from the city center. Frohike's old friend Darwin was an anti-social hermit, and kept his lot overgrown with trees and shrubs. No one could see the new residents from the road. 

On their last reconnaissance Mulder had seen people on the streets. He and Skinner had scoped out the east gate of Fort Detrick yesterday, and had seen civilians entering the base, dressed for work. Men and women walking along the road, who five months ago would have parked their cars in the empty lot on the other side of the fence.

The Consortium had always been good at hiring stoolpigeons: well intentioned naifs who could do their work for them. Hell, they'd used Mulder himself often enough, to flush out leaks and expose their institutional weaknesses. How many of the soldiers and researchers at USAMRIID were there for altruistic reasons? How many thought what they were doing was saving lives?

"Mulder?" Scully's voice came soft from the doorway.

"Yeah, I'm in here." 

Mulder had lit a small candle, a tea light, and set it on the table next to him. The tiny flame reflected in the window, and barely illuminated Scully as she came up behind him. She was dressed for bed, bundled in his old Oxford sweatshirt and a ratty pair of leggings she'd picked up somewhere in their travels. Her hair hung loose, almost to her shoulders now and freed of the elastics that bound it during the day. The professional woman was gone, the fashion and gloss battered by travel and grief: what was left was this tiny distant creature who shared his bed. What he had gained wasn't worth the price they had paid for it.

"So?" She rested her hand on his shoulder, and he felt the light weight of it through the sweater he was wearing.

He didn't turn to look at her, but instead watched what he could see of her face, reflected in the window. "They won't all leave the complex, you know."

Her brow furrowed, and then cleared, and after a moment she nodded. "No, they won't."

"A lot of people are going to die."

They hadn't talked about this. Not in Indiana, not in any of the meetings, not on the trip east. They'd known from the beginning that people would die. Carvalho's people were dying now, and more would die when they incinerated the complex. But they didn't talk about it.

Scully dropped her eyes, raised them again to meet his in the window. "And if we don't do this, how many more will die?"

 _Fifty-two million,_ she had said in that meeting. Fifty-two million from the tuberculosis alone. And Carvalho said--Carvalho said the Consortium were preparing another dose. Something nastier. Ebola, maybe, or diphtheria. So another fifteen percent of the survivors--what was that, forty-five million? And then another fifteen percent after that. 

He couldn't say he hadn't seen those dead, couldn't claim there was no way to stack them up, weigh them against the men and women walking with their lunchbags and their neat clothes through the gates onto the post. The blisters from the burials in Heniston and Indiana were finally gone, but Mulder had dug too many graves since October.

There wasn't anyone around to take this decision from them. It was made. It was made the day they chose to run and live, rather than die in Washington. The day they sat down with Jack and a tattered scrap of paper from Skinner's pocket, and decided doing anything was better than waiting in their safe little hideaway for the End. 

Mulder had killed before, but never so calculatedly. Never knowing in advance it was going to happen. It was a different kind of weight than carrying a gun and a badge, a burden he hadn't quite adjusted to. 

He would have to learn to carry it, though. They all would. For the sake of untold lives, and a promise.

He met Scully's eyes in the window, and nodded; and her hand tightened on his shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

"What do you _mean_ I can't go?"

Mulder could hear her voice from upstairs, where he was cleaning his gun one last time. They had other weapons available--he hadn't seen Frohike without his shotgun in weeks--but he was most comfortable with his SIG and he wanted to make sure it wasn't going to jam when the time came to use it. Jack said it was possible there wouldn't be any violence, but after the past six months Mulder wasn't taking any chances.

"You're our only physician, Dr. Scully. And we can't take the risk of anything happening to you."

"You'll have Linda." Her voice was thin; Mulder hadn't realized how desperate she was to be involved in the operation. This wasn't like Scully. But then Scully hadn't been like Scully for some time. 

Jack's voice was clipped; he was losing patience. "Linda isn't here, and she's not a medical doctor. And she's--you've seen her. Ari's death hit her hard. You're staying here, Dr. Scully, and that's an order."

There was a long silence, and then the door slammed. Mulder glanced through the window to his right, and saw Scully stalk out into the backyard. She paced angrily a few times, and then stopped to lean against a leafless tree, her eyes fixed on nothing. 

It was nearly sunset; they were leaving at full dark, and with luck it would all be over by midnight. Well, not over. It would never really be over. But this job could be.

They were on the clock now. Carvalho and his friends had attacked Aberdeen yesterday, and this morning Mulder had crouched on the roof of the farmhouse and watched dozens of trucks and tanks roll east toward Baltimore from Fort Detrick. With any luck security around the power plant was thin and distracted.

It was an expensive diversion; unless at least two more divisions defected in the next few days, Carvalho was going to take heavy losses. He planned to retreat to the northwest and join up with mutineers in the hills outside Pittsburgh, but he would probably lose a third of his men getting there. Of course, it was possible Carvalho could take Aberdeen, which according to Jack would strike a crippling blow to the Consortium's control of the mid-Atlantic. But Mulder wasn't clinging to possibilities anymore.

He shifted in his seat and picked up his weapon to finish the job, but paused when he saw Gibson slip into the yard from the side gate and approach Scully. Gibson looked even more twitchy than usual, and he pulled his cap off before he began speaking. He spoke for a few minutes, his hands waving gently in explanation. Mulder would have turned away, as he couldn't hear Gibson from this distance anyway, but Scully's reaction locked him in place. She came erect suddenly, and put her hand over her mouth. After a long moment, she let it go, and said a few words, her expression severe. When Gibson nodded, she put a hand on his arm, then turned back to the house.

It was only a few moments before Mulder heard her coming up the stairs. These days she wasn't announced by the clatter of four-inch heels, but the thump of Vibram-soled hiking boots. Even in boots, though, she had the lightest tread of any of them.

His bag was packed and closed by the time she arrived at his door. Whatever it was, he didn't have much time to waste; the team was leaving within the hour. 

"Mulder, it's Bill. Gibson found Bill!"

Whatever the words were Mulder had expected to hear, these weren't them. He turned in surprise, to see Scully caught in the doorway, her hands gripping the doorframe at shoulder height. The last rays of sunset poured in through the window across the bare woods, the parking lots, the empty storefronts of Frederick, and made Scully's winter-pale skin glow with ruddy health. But the expression on her face was what caught Mulder's breath: she looked more alive than she had since they had left Heniston, since before her mother had died.

He swallowed. This was going to be bad. "Bill? Your brother Bill?"

Scully nodded. "Gibson says he's on the installation, maybe even in USAMRIID. We have just enough time to get in and get him out before--"

"Mulder? You ready?" Jack's voice came crisply down the hallway. 

"Yeah, I'll be right down." Mulder slung the pack on his back and checked his weapon again. There was a time he'd loved to dress up for some funky poaching. Now he'd had enough slinking in the shadows to last the rest of his life. 

"Mulder?" Scully's voice had dropped, but she didn't leave the doorway. "Did you hear me? It's Bill."

He bit his lip. The color in the room was fading as the sun dipped below the horizon. "Yeah, I heard you. How does Gibson know he's there?" Fearful of the answer.

"He---uh, he heard him. Like he heard us." She wouldn't meet his eyes. Jesus. She knew better. This was _Scully_. But this was Scully desperate to find one last member of her family alive. If Gibson had told him Sam was alive, and less than ten miles away, Mulder would probably be reacting like Scully was now. But they didn't have any more time. It was too late. And he'd stopped taking stupid chances, risking others' lives on his wild-ass hunches. Far too much was riding on this expedition for him to blow it now, even for Scully's sake.

"Scully. Scully, look at me." Her gaze slid off to the side, then, desperately, met his. Christ, how could she still have so much hope left? "We can't, Scully. We can't. We have to go _now_ or the whole thing falls apart. We blow the plant tonight, or all those people dying in Baltimore are dying for nothing."

She shook her head. The knuckles on her hands stood out where she hung on to the doorway. "Mulder, it's--he's my brother. How can I--even if--even if Gibson might be making a mistake--we have to try!"

"Scully, we can't. We just--we can't. It's too late. And Gibson's probably wrong. Why would Bill be here, anyway? He was in California! Think about it--it's not logical." 

"Mulder--" She said once more, then stopped. Her face was in shadow now, and he could only see her eyes, dark and hopeless, locked on his. She closed them, then, and dropped her hands to her sides. "Right. It's too late, and Gibson's probably wrong anyhow. He--he only said he heard someone who sounded like me, who didn't belong there." Her voice was toneless again, the color gone from it as the light drained from the sky.

Mulder gathered her to him, wrapping his arms around her. Her hair was dry and flyaway in the cold, and it clung to his face as his rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. "Could be anyone, Scully. You know that."

She nodded against his chest. "Could be anyone." She pulled away, wiped a hand across her eyes quickly, then reached out to pull his collar out from under the shoulder-strap of his pack. "Be careful."

"I will." He took her hand then, and her grip bruised him before she turned away from the door and disappeared into the bathroom.

"Mulder!" Skinner this time. Time to go. Time for the endgame. Too late to wonder if maybe the pieces should have been in different places.

**+~+~+**

She hadn't planned to see them off, a woman in the doorway of a hundred westerns clutching her skirts as the men rode away over the hill. But her anger at Jack, at Mulder, at God for bringing her this news too late to do anything about it--she didn't want it to taint them. And while she would never admit to superstition, good thoughts were all she had to give them.

Besides, Linda wasn't here, and someone had to say goodbye to Frohike.

They all looked far more dangerous than she had expected, Frohike and Mulder, Jack and Skinner, all in black as they went over the plan one last time. Scully had learned a lot about Frohike in the last six months that she had never known before, but she'd never have thought to see him so comfortable with a shotgun in his hands. The four of them were crouched around the map-covered coffee table, Scully and Gibson circling them like erratic satellites.

Finally Jack slapped one dark hand on the table. "Right. Let's go." 

As they filed toward the door, Mulder and Skinner both nodding to her, she pulled Frohike aside. "Frohike, I--" And stopped. What could she say?

Gibson moved the candles back to the coffee table now that Jack had removed the maps. Frohike cocked his head at her. Without her heels, his face was a lot closer to Scully's, and she saw in his eyes a glint of something knowing, something too much like pity.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll look after that crack-brained maniac, even though he will never deserve you." And flashed that leer it had taken her two years to learn to look beyond. 

Mulder's voice came protesting from the doorway. "Hey!" 

She couldn't help the smile, and it had been so long, her cheeks almost cramped up. "Frohike, I don't know what _we_ do to deserve _you_. You take care of yourself." Then she put her hands on either side of his head, holding him in place. "And this is for Linda, because she's not here to do it herself." 

She held him still as his eyes widened, and kissed him thoroughly. It was the least she could do for the man who'd kept her upright when Ari died, who'd nursed Mulder when Linda collapsed in grief, who'd saved them all in the first place. When she finally pulled away both their eyes were wet. 

Mulder coughed behind her, and Frohike straightened. He met Scully's eyes for another moment, then tucked up his shotgun and headed out the door after the rest. Mulder left last, his eyes meeting hers once more, everything they didn't need to say on his face. When they were gone, Scully closed the door and leaned against it, letting her head fall back and her eyes close in exhaustion. She hated lying to anyone, particularly Mulder. She was no good at lying to Mulder.

Billy. 

_I will, Mom, I promise._

Gibson was in the kitchen, making yet another sandwich out of three-week-old bread and peanut butter. There was a tiny treasured bottle of goat milk on the counter for use in what their host insisted was coffee, and Gibson took a swallow straight from the bottle as she walked in.

"Just getting something to tide me over, Agent Scully. I'll be ready to go in a moment."

She sighed. "Gibson, could you at least _pretend_ you don't know what I'm thinking?"

He looked more amused than hurt. "When you're broadcasting like that? Even Mr. Skinner should have heard you."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, can you do it? Can you get us in?"

"Sure," he said around a mouthful of peanut butter. "Getting out might be harder. But most of the soldiers are gone. Plus, I remember a few things from when I was there."

"Fine," she said. "Let me get a few things together, then let's go. We don't have a lot of time."

**+~+~+**

Before the Pulse, Mulder reflected, on an early evening in March, the streets of Frederick would be filled with parents picking their kids up from sports practice, dropping off dry-cleaning, visiting the library, racing to the grocery store for one last ingredient for dinner. These days things were different. Frederick was safer than most of the country, or at least safer from riots and looting, because of the military presence in the town. But after dark the town shut down.

As the four of them slipped cautiously through town, sticking to alleys and side yards, they saw few lights and no moving cars. The few people they saw on the streets were walking carefully. Mulder felt the freezing slush begin to soak through his boots. They carried their weapons inside their coats and packs; Carvalho's men were supposed to provide the explosives. If they were there. If Carvalho had done what he was supposed to, when he was supposed to. If he hadn't decided betrayal was a better route to longevity than loyalty to his former commander.

_This could be a clusterfuck of cosmic proportions._

The power plant was on the eastern edge of the base, just inside the fence. Carvalho's team was to meet them in the parking lot behind a dry-cleaning shop three blocks outside the nearest gate. Jack paused them at the corner of the next building over, a travel agency. Several of the windows were broken but posters advertising weekends in Bermuda and Caribbean cruises fluttered in the illumination from Jack's flashlight. 

"Okay," said Jack. "I'm going to check if they're there. Wait here."

Mulder opened his mouth and then closed it again. He had to trust Jack now; too much was at stake for his old paranoia to get in the way now. Mulder had managed to keep his temper and his anti-authoritarian impulses in control for the last few months, ever since that appalling trip to Louisville. It was an accomplishment he didn't think Jack truly appreciated, but that Skinner had remarked on more than once. 

Casting a wary up and down the street, Jack slipped around the corner and was gone. Frohike sighed, shifted his pack on his shoulders, and leaned against the building. Mulder looked at him with concern. Jack had set a stiff pace, and while Frohike was in good shape for his age, he was still shorter and older than anyone else on this expedition. 

"You okay?"

Frohike scowled. "I'll be fine, G-man."

They didn't have to wait long before Jack returned, and nodded shortly at them. Mulder followed Skinner around the corner to where a truck familiar from a hundred movies sat idling, its lights off. Jack paused at the driver's side door and exhanged a few words with the driver, and then waved at the other three to climb into the back.

Boxes filled the rear of the cargo space, but there was plenty of room for four men to crouch between the crates and the front of the truck. With a rumble and a jolt, the truck pulled out of the lot and turned west on the main drag. Mulder tried not to wince when Frohike's elbow jabbed him in the kidney as they took the turn.

From everything they'd heard, the base was almost empty; Carvalho's push was intended to clear out most of the troops stationed in Frederick, but there was no question Detrick would still be guarded. As they pulled up at the guard shack, Mulder leaned against the wall of the truck and kept himself from fumbling for his gun. 

He couldn't hear the voices clearly enough to tell what they were saying, just rumbles. Wait, that one--

"--Belvoir? Without an escort?" That had to be one of the guards. His voice got louder as he walked towards the back of the truck.

"We had one, but they got called off, sent to APG. Something's going down in Harford County but they wouldn't say what. You got any news?"

The footsteps just next to Mulder paused, and then returned towards the front of the truck.

"Nothin' I can tell you, sorry. But you're good to go. Just watch out for the damned groundhogs, they're everywhere this spring."

Mulder sighed, and felt Frohike relax next to him, as the truck growled into gear again. One barrier crossed, one potential catastrophe averted.

Next was the fun part, where they got to blow shit up.

**+~+~+**

Gibson wasn't a chatty boy at the best of times, but Scully had at least been able to get him to explain how they were going to approach the building most likely to be hiding her brother.

"We won't be able to just walk in. That's the main headquarters of the complex, where the most delicate work is done, where the most important offices are. Even if all the regular troops are gone, there will be soldiers there. So we have to go underneath."

"Underneath?" Scully followed Gibson down a narrow lane in the middle of a residential block. Rowhouses were built close to the street, and garages, yards, and sheds hid behind them in the middle of the block. It felt good, familiar, after six months in the Midwest. She dodged around a toppled garbage can.

"Yeah. We get into another building, farther away, and then work our way over through the steam tunnels. They're all over the complex. 'S how I got out the first time."

She raised a brow. "Won't they be guarded too?" This couldn't be that easy.

"Maybe. But I don't think a lot of people know about them. Still better than knocking on the front door, isn't it?" Had to be better. 

And here they were, scrabbling along in the dark on the first floor of the National Institutes of Health, if the signs on the office doors were any indication, and looking for a stairway down.

Eventually they found one, and Scully picked the lock, her hands slick with sweat. They were losing time. She was afraid to look at her watch, and when the door finally clicked open, she thrust Gibson through with no ceremony.

She saw a dim flash as he threw her an annoyed glance, and then started feeling his way down the stairs. Below the first landing she felt safe enough to turn on her small flashlight, and squeeze in front of the boy. He might be her guide, he might be telepathic, but he was still fourteen and she was a federal agent. She would lead the way.

The door at the bottom of the stairs wasn't locked. She turned the handle very slowly, her ear pressed to the door. Gibson shook his head. "Nobody out there." She turned off the flashlight before pressing the door open just in case, but he was right. The hallway was empty.

Gibson nodded to their right, to the north, if Scully hadn't lost all sense of direction, and they turned right once more before he stopped at a small metal door. "This is it."

To her relief, it was locked. They wouldn't lock it if they used these tunnels, right? Thin logic.

This lock was easier, and within moments they slipped through into a narrow corridor dank with mildew and cluttered with piping and ductwork. Periodically a small door opened off to one side or another, or they passed junctions of pipework labelled indecipherably in neat black printing on curling post-cards.

They traveled for some distance through these tunnels, dodging under steaming pipes and dripping pipes, occasionally hearing a rustle of animal life or stepping over evidence that some people used these passageways: a cigarette butt, a candy wrapper, an empty 7-Up can. Scully stole a glance at her watch. It was nearly 8:30 p.m. 

"Gibson, how much farther?" They had paused at an intersection, and the boy was casting back and forth, his brow etched in uncertainty.

"Close," he said. "Very close." He turned toward the right, and led them thirty yards to a door, and behind the door, to another stairway. Scully started up the stair, but paused when Gibson put a hand on her arm. "No talking now. There are people up there."

She nodded, and turned off the flashlight. Better hope the door at the top of the stairs was unlocked too. She crept silently up the flights, gun in hand. There was a small window in the doorway at the first landing, but Gibson shook his head. She ducked under the glass and kept going up the next flight, breathing shallowly. She could hear her pulse in her ears. It was different, doing this without Mulder. Scarier.

The light was on in the outside hallway at the next landing. Scully stood well to one side of the window, and waited. Gibson laid his head against the door, as if he could hear the heartbeats of any soldiers in the hall. After what must have been three minutes, he smiled softly. "I think it's okay," he whispered. "But be very quiet--I don't know who the other people are here but if we wake them up---"

Scully blinked. It had never occurred to her that there would be other prisoners here. How could she rescue Bill and not them? But she was only one person, with limited time and weaponry. She couldn't save them all--not right now. But there was a chance, if she came back after they blew the plant--she could make sure Skinner and Jack freed them before blowing the complex. That would work. Trying to rescue them all, though--it would be a recipe for disaster, and might even alert the military that something was happening. She couldn't take the risk.

Bill. She was here for Bill. 

She saw Gibson's eyes narrow, but he nodded as he followed her thought. "We'll come back for them, I promise," she said, and made herself believe it. "Okay, let's go."

**+~+~+**

The power plant, a two-story brick building twice the size of the house Mulder grew up in, exploded with a very satisfactory boom. Mulder and Frohike were only two hundred yards away when it blew, spewing a hundred tons of brick and rebar into the March night. Mulder grabbed Frohike by the collar and yanked him back to his feet. Skinner and Jack had given up all pretense of secrecy and were pelting for the east gate.

The lights had all gone out. Over the roar of the fire behind them, Mulder could hear the sound of a siren. The distraction was working. Which meant they were really on the clock now. 

Still towing Frohike, Mulder slowed to a stop in the shadow beneath two interwoven pines. He looked back at the burning plant, while Frohike bent over his knees and heaved for breath. "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?"

As soon as they caught up with Jack and Skinner outside the gate, the four of them were going to circle around the base, pick up the rest of the supplies, and cut through the fence on the west side. USAMRIID was closer to that side of the installation. Four miles, maybe. But Mulder had seen the maps--from where he now stood it wasn't even a mile as the crow flies.

Five months ago Mulder had made a promise to Maggie Scully, a promise witnessed only by the stars and his own blistered hands. A promise he'd never put into words but that he would surely breach if there was a chance Bill Scully was held captive on this post, and Mulder did nothing to save him. 

Mulder had seen too much of Bill Scully to be sentimental about him. But Maggie was dead, Charlie was god-knew-where, and Bill was all the family Scully had left. 

Jack and Skinner had disappeared through the trees. Frohike had his breath back. "Mulder! Come on!"

"You go on. I'll catch up."

"What?" Frohike had known him too long: the suspicion dawned on his face instantly.

"Gibson thinks Scully's brother is being held on the complex. I'm gonna try to find him."

"Well, shit." 

Mulder shifted his backpack, now empty of explosives. He had the SIG and several cartridges, a second gun in his ankle holster, and a radio in the backpack. It wouldn't be enough. 

The sound of truck engines was closer now. He had to go or he'd never made it without being spotted. 

"Okay, then," said Frohike. "Let's go."

"Fro--"

"Can it, Mulder. Scully would have my ass for breakfast if I let you do this alone."

True enough. Mulder shrugged. "Then let's go." They would have to move fast to get to Bill and get out before the place blew. He hadn't told Skinner or Jack what Scully had said, so there was no chance they'd know where he was. He wasn't abandoning them--they were done with this phase of the job, and so close to the edge of the base, they'd have no trouble--

But as he turned to lead Frohike through the thin screen of trees westward, they heard a scatter of shots from behind them, from the direction Skinner and Jack had gone. 

Shit, shit, shit. There was some faint shouting, and then more shots.

Could he weigh the chance of Bill against the reality of Jack and Skinner? No. No, he really couldn't. Mulder didn't even have to say anything to Frohike; they turned as one, and started running back east.

The light from the burning power plant didn't help them much. The shots had stopped, but that was no guarantee of anything. Skinner and Jack could be bleeding on the ground, or gone to earth somewhere. Mulder put on a burst of speed, leaving Frohike behind. 

Breath rasping in his lungs, gun gripped in his sweating hand, he raced alongside the road towards the east gate. In the darkness he wasn't aware of the edge of the tree-line until he'd left it, and by then it was too late. As he burst out of the trees, he saw a half-dozen figures struggling in the darkness, just twenty yards away. 

He staggered to a stop, gripping his gun in both hands, and tried to identify Jack or Skinner--but then there was an unintelligible shout behind him, a blur of movement to his right, and he found himself face-down on the wet ground, his arms wrenched behind his back.

Mulder turned his head with difficulty and tried to see if Jack or Skinner had escaped, but all he could see were wet boots and the soiled cuffs of camouflage pants. And in the distance, just for a moment, he saw the glint of a sweaty face staring at him from the shadow of the trees. Frohike, at least, was still free.


	3. Chapter 3

Scully raised an eyebrow at Gibson. _You're sure this is the one?_

He nodded in confirmation.

Well, then. She'd come this far on the strength of his word. She could go a little farther. She pulled out her lockpick again, and set to work by the intermittent flash of Gibson's flashlight. She was trying to be as quiet as she could, and it was a more complicated lock; as a result it took a lot longer than she would have liked, and her hands were wet with sweat by the time she heard the final soft _click_.

Although she knew Gibson would have warned her of anyone approaching, Scully cast a long look up and down the hallway before easing the door open. 

The small room looked more like an office than anything else. Scully kept the beam of her flashlight pointed at the floor as she thumbed it on. A metal desk was pushed against one wall, and a set of bars had been bolted over the window. On the right side of the room was a cot, the same awkward wood and canvas make they'd slept on as children when there were houseguests. The cot was occupied, the dull blankets wrapped around an unmoving figure topped with ginger hair.

Scully shone her flashlight on the cot. There was a grunt, and the blankets moved, and a grumpy voice muttered, "What is it _now_ , you fucking nazis?"

The cot swayed dangerously, its joints creaking, as its occupant rolled over. A broad hand pulled the blanket down to reveal thinning hair over a winter-pale Irish complexion. But the eyes were brown, not blue, and the face was thinner than Bill's, the nose sharper.

" _Charlie?_ " Scully hadn't dropped a flashlight in a very long time; instead she stepped forward. "Oh, my god. Charlie?" Her voice cracked, a harsh whisper.

"Dana? Jesus, Dana! What the hell are you doing here?" Charlie wrenched at the blankets around his legs and stumbled to his feet. And then his arms were wrapped around her and it felt so good she almost wept into his grimy T-shirt.

But she didn't have the time. She was already pulling away when Gibson hissed at her from the door. "Miss Scully!"

Scully swiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand. "I know, Gibson. Charlie, we have to go now. I'll tell you everything but right now we have to leave. Is there anything you need here?" She looked around the room, but was anonymous, empty of character or personality: a cell.

She looked back to see Charlie staring at her. Then he blinked and shook his head. "No, nothing but my shoes." He dropped onto the bed and pulled on a decrepit pair of sneakers, stealing glances at her as he tied his laces.

What did he see? Not his little sister the doctor, Scully thought, but a lean and tired woman with a gun at her back and spare cartridges in her pocket. A woman who had seen too many people die--oh god I'll have to tell him about Mom but not yet not yet--and whose lover was a mile away setting explosives around a power plant. A fugitive, a guerrilla. Her lips twisted; they were dry and chapped.

She pulled a sweater off a shelf and stuffed it into her pack, while Charlie finished tying his shoes. "Where we going?" he asked, as he stood up.

Scully looked to Gibson, who lingered in the door, his glasses reflecting the minimal light emitted by her flashlight beam. He shook his head. They didn't have much time left but the hall was clear.

"Out of here for now," she said. "I'll tell you everything later, but for now we have to move." 

Charlie blinked, but stood up obediently. This was Charlie, this thin, shadowed man? Dana's darling younger brother, who had flirted with Mulder that night they had visited him in Missoula? Less than a year ago, but Charlie had aged as much as she had. They would have a lot to talk about--if they survived the next four hours.

Oh, God, Scully thought, as she turned off the flashlight and slipped out the door after Gibson. If they captured Charlie, what had happened to Bill?

**+~+~+**

He'd been captured before: being transported through a military complex in the back of a truck, his hands bound before him, was nothing new. But never before had he been so very aware of the time ticking away, conscious of the threat he himself had helped to set in motion.

The last time he'd looked at his watch it was after 11. The plane would come at 12:30, or whenever it was convenient for the pilot. Plus or minus thirty minutes could spell death for all of them.

His captors had tried to call for instructions on the radio, but there was no answer at the other end. They'd at least taken care of the power supply, then: for a while the responses would be ineffective, uncoordinated. Maybe he'd get lucky.

But he looked at the machine gun in the hands of the young man sitting across from him and realized his luck may have run out.

**+~+~+**

Getting out wasn't as easy as getting in. But then that was always the way of it; she shouldn't be surprised that this business was no different. Except this time she was responsible for her baby brother and a fourteen-year-old boy, and Mulder wasn't there at her back.

She wished she'd thought to bring another gun.

"Stay behind me," she hissed, when Charlie made to move past her into yet another hallway. Gibson was taking them out a different way, a more direct way, he'd assured her. But he couldn't promise there were no guards, and so she moved with all the caution she could summon, all the while aware that the time was slipping past. 

It was after 11:00 already. And Jack had been unable to get a commitment from the pilot at Muir; he'd try for 12:30, but couldn't promise. If it seemed safer, he'd come earlier, or later, or not at all.

He had to come, or this would all be for nothing, and they would all be captured, and people would keep dying.

Still no movement in the hallway. She slipped down the corridor a dozen yards, waved to Gibson and Charlie to follow her, and then moved a little farther on, to the next intersection. Holding her breath, she dropped to her knees and risked a glance down the hall to her right. Thank god, there was the exit Gibson had promised. Twenty yards and they were free of the building.

Except twenty yards down the _other_ hallway was a guard, standing in front of a closed door. He wasn't conveniently asleep or watching a basketball game or reading porn; he was alert and armed and if Scully moved out even another inch he'd see her.

Damn. She edged backwards, not daring to breathe, and shuffled backwards on her knees, careful not to let the SIG knock against the linoleum floor. After about a body-length she figured it was safe enough to get up, and she waved Gibson and Charlie back to the doorway they'd come through just a moment before.

"No luck," she whispered with a grimace. "The door's open, I think, but there's a guard the other way. Gibson, is there another way out of this building, one that won't be guarded?"

He shook his head, and Charlie slumped against the stairwell wall in frustration. "What are we gonna do, Dana?"

Charlie was worried, but not as worried as he would be if he knew they were on a clock. Gibson caught her eye, and she knew the same thought was occupying him. There was no way they could wait for the guard to fall asleep, or go off duty. They had to distract him, in such a way they could slip out the other door with no one noticing.

"Gibson," she said suddenly, reminded of how they'd gotten into the locked building to begin with. "Can you do what you did before?"

The boy's solemn face grew more sober, if that were possible. "I can try, Miss Scully. But--"

She nodded. "It'll have to do."

This time Gibson led the way to the intersection, and as they approached it Scully heard voices. Dammit. How to distract _two_ guards? Maybe it was the end of the rotation, and one of them would leave. But if it were, one of them was in no hurry to get back to his quarters; instead the voices continued, at a level just low enough to disguise the actual content. They could be talking about the deaths of millions, or the last Orioles game they attended.

She stole another glance at her watch: 11:27. Charlie spotted her looking at it, and tapped it, a question on his face. She shook her head, and put her hand on Gibson's shoulder instead.

Gibson shrugged, dropped his head and raised his shoulders. Beneath her hand she could feel the tension in his body. Time passed, not more than a minute or two, and the voices around the corner became softer and softer; eventually they fell into silence.

She didn't want to think about what Gibson had done; whatever it was, this was their chance. Once out of the building they could run for the fence. They'd be off the base in minutes.

She turned to Charlie, climbing to her feet, and tugged at his arm to get him up off the floor. But as she turned back towards the corner, she heard a step behind her, and her gun was in her hand by the time she had completed the turn.

Except her gun was useless against the automatic weapons in the hands of the two young enlisted men standing six feet away. 

"Thanks, kid," said the younger soldier, his weapon aimed at Charlie.

Scully felt the blood drain from her face, her stomach clench. Gibson met her eyes for a moment, then looked away desperately. 

There was nothing to be said, after all. Gibson had never meant to help her; it was all a front. And now that they were in custody, Gibson could tell the military all about the plane on its way, churning through the darkness from Pennsylvania.

She had seen too much; she wasn't supposed to be surprised. But she couldn't look at Gibson as they took away her gun and brought the three of them to another guard station, where their escort was doubled. Four armed men now surrounded them; there would be no escape now.

The soldiers hustled them silently down the stairs and into a maze of corridors. After the first twenty yards the men on either side of her let go of Scully's arms and she could walk freely. These halls were as empty of people as the others they had traveled, but they had an air of activity. Doors were open to offices and break rooms; lights were on; coffee cups sat next to computer monitors on which multi-colored polygons bounced serenely. 

The staff had merely stepped away, it appeared. Scully wondered: if she touched a coffee mug, would it be cold? But she was not allowed to linger. She craned her neck as they passed the door to what was obviously a laboratory, and the man on her left, his face stern, grunted a warning and shifted his grip on his machine gun. She turned her face to the front, and kept her eyes to herself.

They sat for some time on a hard bench, and a twitchy young man kept a machine gun on them while his companion made some calls. She could smell cigarette smoke; she thought it was from the doorway at the end of the room. 

Scully twisted her arm and tried to see her watch, but it was hidden under the cuff of her jacket. How much time did they have? 

Charlie looked pale; Gibson unconcerned. She decided that if anyone knew when they should get worried, it would be Gibson. 

But she didn't like sitting here, and she didn't like not knowing what time it was.

**+~+~+**

They hustled him out of the truck fast, through some doors and up a flight of stairs into a well-appointed reception area. Where Mulder realized that bad as it was to be captured by the military not an hour before an explosion would obliterate the premises, it was far worse to be met by the worried faces of his partner, her brother, and the fourteen-year-old telepath he'd left in a safehouse several miles away.

Except the brother wasn't Bill at all. It was Charlie, and the last time Mulder had seen him was a year ago and three thousand miles away. Mulder couldn't even begin to wonder how Charlie turned up _here_ of all places.

Scully must have guessed he might be captured, and didn't let herself react, but her brother didn't have her foresight. "My God, Dana, it's Mulder!" He stepped forward to help, and met with the butt end of one of the guns. He fell gasping to the floor.

Mulder said nothing; there was nothing to say. Scully narrowed her eyes at the blood on his face but kept silent as well. At an order from the young lieutenant in charge, the four of them were escorted through the inner door.

What they saw when they entered the office was acres of clean desk, topped with a single file folder and an ashtray with a single butt in it. On the other side of the desk was the back of a tall executive chair, one nicer than Mulder had ever seen in the FBI's offices. The chair was tall enough to hide its occupant, and made of glossy burgundy leather, a shade that perfectly coordinated with the tasteful wallpaper on the walls. 

The guards lined the captives up in front of the desk, and coughed respectfully. "Sir, the prisoners."

It was no surprise when the chair spun around slowly to reveal the withered face of the man Scully had finally put a name to after so many years--C. G. B. Spender.

"I see," said Spender, and tapped the ash off the end of his cigarette. "I admit to being impressed by your stamina, agents."

Scully shifted next to Mulder: he knew without looking that she would have that expression on her face, that look of disdainful rage she wore whenever they had to deal with the conspirators. Mulder shrugged elaborately. "Thought it was a nice time to do some antiquing."

The soldier closest to him raised his gun fractionally but Spender waved him back. He puffed for a moment on his cigarette, the smoke rising up and disappearing through a ventilation shaft in the ceiling. Spender's eyes flicked back and forth from Mulder to Scully to Charlie, and then fixed on Gibson. 

Mulder swallowed nervously: there was something just too predatory in Spender's face as he looked at Gibson.

"My boy Gibson. So good to have you back at last."

"Yeah, because he was so well treated the last time he was here." Gibson hadn't said much, but Scully had told Mulder about the newer scars, the ones that were healing so slowly. 

At the end of the line as he was, Mulder couldn't see Gibson very clearly, but he could see the boy's feet--absurdly small for his age, wearing stained black Converse high-tops--shuffle, and then still. One foot kicked out and scuffed at the dull green carpet on the floor.

Spender's attention sharpened on the boy. "Do you have something to say, Gibson? Something to redeem yourself for leaving so--unexpectedly?" 

Scully stiffened next to Mulder, her brows dropping sharply. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

"Actually," said Gibson, his voice as soft and knowing as ever. "You'll want to leave. They're blowing up this complex tonight." 

"Gibson, no!" But Scully was too late. Mulder grabbed her arm as she tried to turn towards the boy. Their guards had raised their weapons, and looked both nervous and angry.

Spender dropped his cigarette and leaned forward. "They what?" The cigarette rolled across the glossy surface of his desk, unregarded.

"A bomber is coming," said the boy. "You should leave."

There was a long silence. Mulder could hear Scully breathing harshly, and couldn't bring himself to look at Gibson. Maybe Spender wouldn't believe Gibson, although Scully had pretty much prevented that. He turned his head marginally and checked the clock: 12:12. They were almost out of time.

Finally Spender nodded. "Very well. Lieutenant, please evacuate the remaining staff: I'd like this facility cleared within the hour."

The lieutenant nodded crisply and turned to the door.

"Lieutenant. One more thing."

"Yes, sir?" Attentive face, clean professional uniform. 

"Put the boy in the shipment to Aberdeen, and get rid of the rest."

Mulder gaped. No, he couldn't let it end this way. Not this way, not after all this time. Something had to survive. "Spender, you know Scully could help you! You don't have to kill her!" His voice cracked, and he struggled against his bonds.

Spender didn't even look up from the files he was assembling on his desk. "You've exhausted my patience, Agent Mulder. Good-bye."

The soldier behind him shoved Mulder roughly forward, and he staggered against Scully. She braced him to regain his footing, then moved on, following Gibson out of the office. Mulder glanced back once, but Spender was already on the phone, his gaze fixed on the wall. 

And then the door closed behind them.

**+~+~+**

They weren't going to die. Scully didn't struggle, but she let her eyes rove around as they progressed in a shaky file down one hallway and then another.

Charlie was shaking his head, over and over, as he stumbled along in front of her. "They can't--you can't just _kill us_!"

"He's right," Scully said softly to the lieutenant, pitching her voice to reach only him. "You're an Army officer, a man of honor. You can't kill prisoners, not without a trial. It's an illegal order." 

"Shut up!" he hissed, not looking at her. His ears, pale but freckled, were turning red, and the color swept down his neck to the collar of his uniform. He was young, so young, and Scully could barely remember her own horror and astonishment at being betrayed by those she was trained to respect. It was all so long ago.

The lieutenant opened a door and gestured them down a dingy flight of stairs.

"Murder is murder, lieutenant, and that man--" as Scully passed him, she canted her head backwards to indicate Spender, "--is _not_ your superior officer. He doesn't even _have_ an official rank."

"Shut. Up!" he said again, and shoved her, so she stumbled down several steps before she regained her balance.

"Hey!" Mulder protested from behind her. 

_Be quiet, Mulder,_ she thought fiercely. _Don't get in the way._ But when she opened her mouth again, to try again, the lieutenant put his pistol to Charlie's head. And she couldn't, she just couldn't. Charlie's face was pale, the lieutenant's fixed and terrified in the fitful light of the stairwell. Charlie met her eyes. Scully closed her mouth and bowed her head.

They came out of the stairwell, down a hallway and out the door into the open, where they paused. The lieutenant looked uncertain, and Scully realized it was because he didn't know how or where to do this thing. It wasn't every day you were ordered to kill civilians in cold blood, and there was, after all, no standard operating protocol for it.

After a muttered exchange between the lieutenant and one of the guards, the prisoners were herded around the corner of the building, into an open courtyard. Scully realized it was where she had started the evening, barely two hours ago: the huge steel ball loomed over them.

"It's the two-million liter test sphere," murmured Mulder in her ear. "Where they tested poison gas dispersal on 'volunteer prisoners' during World War II." 

As the four of them were urged ungently towards the rusting ladder leading up to the sphere, Scully realized that it was also where they were all going to die.

**+~+~+**

Mulder couldn't remember a time when he felt more helpless; not even during the bad weeks in Heniston, or when Maggie died. Then at least he knew Scully was safe, and he was safe, and they still had a chance to make a difference, no matter how small. But this--here they were, in the dark, surrounded by soldiers who were going to shoot them, and _nothing_ he could say would make any difference at all.

If they were going to do anything, try anything, it had to be now. Mulder looked around as they approached the sphere. Charlie was in front of the line, now only a few feet from the ladder, followed by Scully, Mulder himself, and Gibson. Four soldiers surrounded them, weapons at the ready, and the lieutenant stood to the side, at the base of one of the legs holding up the sphere, looking determined and a little scared. 

If Mulder turned fast, he could maybe grab a gun.

There was no way to warn Scully or Charlie. He just had to try it, because if he didn't they were all going to die anyway. The guy to his right was shorter than Mulder was, and very young; Mulder thought he could probably wrestle the gun away from him if he moved fast enough. He had to do it _now_ , though.

His muscles tensed, his vision narrowed, and then there was a whisper, as if someone leaned in close to him and breathed into his ear. A soft voice, one word, inserted directly into his head. " _Wait!_ "

Wait for what?

Charlie was at the ladder. At a push from his guard, he put his hands on it and began to climb. 

It must have been Gibson, but Mulder couldn't turn around to look at the boy. Wait for what? Wait for who? Wait for how long?

Charlie was at the top now, standing on a small platform about the size of a fire escape. In front of him was a round hatch, like a door in a submarine, with a circular handle. The guard at the bottom swung his gun in a short arc, waving Scully towards the ladder. "Open the door!" He shouted up at Charlie, his voice bouncing off the courtyard walls.

The light in the courtyard was bad; it was illuminated mostly by the emergency lighting over the doorway they had just exited. Mulder couldn't see Charlie's face, but he could see Scully, and the way her hand shook as she put it on the ladder, fine and sickly white against the pitted green of the metal.

Mulder couldn't wait anymore; he'd rather die himself than see Scully shot in front of him. He swung around at his guard, just as another whisper entered his mind. " _Now._ "

At the same moment, gunshots hammered through the silence around them, shattering the tension of the moment. The guard crumbled before Mulder touched him, and Mulder hesitated, looking at the soft white face of the boy he'd been ready to kill just seconds before. And then he turned, ready to shelter Scully from the firefight that was erupting behind them.

Scully didn't need any sheltering, though. She had dived behind one of the legs of the sphere; Mulder snatched up his guard's gun and hid behind the other, looking around wildly for the source of the gunshots. It had all taken maybe four seconds, total.

The initial flurry of shooting had stopped. There were two bodies on the ground, Mulder's guard and the lieutenant. The other two guards were crouched behind the ladder, looking around wildly: one of them had his hand wrapped in Gibson's collar. Mulder couldn't see Charlie from where he was, but he had to assume Charlie was still completely exposed on top of the ladder.

In the darkness, Mulder could see movement at the other end of the courtyard, several figures moving. He caught a glimpse of pale skin as someone stood up from behind a bush and waved. "Mulder!"

Skinner.

It was Skinner, and he'd brought the cavalry.


	4. Chapter 4

Scully wanted to believe it was over. There was Skinner, with Frohike, Jack, and two others, weapons in hand, looking reassuringly competent. But they had no time now, no time before the bomber would be here, and Spender was getting away.

Jack had disarmed the last two guards, who sat on their hands on the ground. Charlie was leaning against the ladder, looking shaken. And Gibson--Gibson was staring fixedly into space, oblivious to the activity around him.

"Doctor Scully, are you all right?" Jack put a hand on her shoulder. 

She nodded, and caught his arm as he began to turn away. "There are other prisoners in the complex, we have to get them out if we can!"

"Where?" That was Skinner, carrying two assault rifles slung over his shoulder and a third in his hands. 

Scully turned, uncertain, and then oriented herself. "Two buildings over, that way. On the third floor. We can't leave them there--"

"There's no question of that," snapped Jack. "Benson!" he called, and one of his people, a tall black woman Scully hadn't seen before, came over to him. "You take these guys back to the truck with the boy. Skinner and I will go find these other prisoners. If we're not back in fifteen, leave without us. I want you three miles from here by 12:45, got it?"

"Sir!" she replied, and Scully would have argued--she knew where the other prisoners were--except Gibson had come out of his frozen state and was tugging at her sleeve.

"Agent Scully, Agent Scully!"

"What is it, Gibson?" Mulder asked from behind her. He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned back against him, just for a moment, wishing she could just stay that way, letting the heat of his body soak into her.

Gibson pointed back at the building they'd left, the dirty yellow of the emergency lights turning his glasses opaque. "The smoking man, he's still in there, and he has the --" he hesitated, fumbling for words, "--the germs, to make everyone sick. And the cure, too, the information that was in the computers! He's gone downstairs, he's going to escape through the tunnels!"

Mulder's hand tightened on her; Scully realized that no, they weren't done yet. "Why should we trust you now, Gibson? You betrayed us to Spender before." 

The boy began to shift from foot to foot, shaking his head. "I had to, I had to get close to him to find it, it's what you needed all along. If we didn't see him I couldn't find it, and we need it, you said so, if you don't get it we'll all die, everyone will."

"Right. Then let's go." Frohike grinned at Mulder and slapped his back. "You unkillable bastard. Bet we surprised the shit out of you."

Scully stepped away from Mulder and turned around. Benson and Charlie stood over the captured guards now, pistols in hand as the stunned-looking men struggled to their feet. Skinner and Jack had their heads together over Skinner's watch. Scully didn't look at her watch; without the vaccine, it wouldn't matter much if they survived the bomb anyway.

"Which way, Gibson?"

The boy pointed again. "All the way down into the labs, at the far end of the building. He's alone."

Scully nodded. Off they went, but Frohike followed them this time, after a brief pause to tell Skinner. There was no time to argue priorities, and the last Scully saw of her former boss was a wave of his hand before he set off in the opposite direction.

They ran, Scully struggling to keep up with the other two as the doorways flashed past them. Empty rooms upon empty rooms, no time to do check for ambushes, just running. They found the last stairwell, the door still ajar, the lights illuminating nothing but clean white tile and metal-edged risers, leading down into the dark. If Gibson had lied--again--

She pushed the thought from her mind and kept going. Mulder took the stairs down three and four at a time; she stuck to two, each step jarring her spine, their footfalls echoing in the stairwell. Frohike paused to gasp for breath, and she passed him, bang bang bang down another flight, swinging around the corner with a hand on the railing, bang bang bang down.

Four flights down, the stairs ended. Scully fetched up next to Mulder behind the door. This one was closed, but not locked, and had no window in it. Mulder eased it open and peered out, then stepped out, weapon first. Scully realized she had no gun; Spender's men had taken it away and she hadn't thought to get one from Skinner before racing off after Spender.

The hallway was empty, but a glass-topped door a few yards down the hall had promising signs on them, the kind of signs with warning labels. Scully glanced behind her to see Frohike at the door of the stairwell before following Mulder to the lab door. She didn't bother to read the red warning labels plastered on it, but noticed the double set of seals inside the jamb. This had to be the place.

Someone was in there: Scully could see a dim shadow against a filing cabinet inside an inner lab, but whoever it was, he was hidden behind the inner wall. She put a hand on the doorknob and looked at Mulder.

This was it, this was the end of it all, of six months of death and loss, of the endless journey east in the cold: they stopped Spender here. And if it took holding him here until the bomb fell and incinerated them all, that was what they would do. Mulder met her eyes, his own shadowed in the poor light of the hallway, and nodded once. 

They went in.

Mulder swung into the inner doorway, gun raised. Scully was behind him, wishing for her own weapon.

It was indeed Spender, hunched over a desktop computer that was just spitting out a cd from its drive. His suit was unrumpled; a burning cigarette rested on the black surface of the lab table. In place of the cigarette he usually had in his hand were two small glass vials, one filled with amber liquid, the other clear. They were closed with red rubber stoppers, and Scully's breath caught in her throat at the finite distance between them and the viruses multiplying in those tiny glass tubes.

"Spender," warned Mulder, raising his gun. "Put the vials down."

"You again?" replied Spender, not even raising his head. He waved the vials at them, using the other hand to awkwardly place the cd into a jewel case. "You can't shoot me, agents: if you did, I'd drop these, and all your efforts would go to waste, wouldn't they?" The cd finally clicked into place, and he straightened, shutting the case with a smirk.

There were three cds on the table now; from what Gibson had said, they were full of the information Scully needed, data on the viruses, and the vaccines. Maybe data on Spender's contacts with the aliens, even. They absolutely could _not_ let Spender get away. But they couldn't risk the viruses being released, either.

There was another door behind Spender. If he got out of this room, he could lock it behind him and get away. They were going to have to shoot him, Scully realized, as Spender picked up the cd cases. They could kill him, and the viruses might be released, but in minutes the entire complex was going to be destroyed anyway. If they stayed, if they didn't carry the virus out with them--

Mulder sagged beside her, just enough to show he'd come to the same conclusion she had. It was no more than she'd expected, really. She swallowed, and closed her hand over Mulder's free hand, the one without a gun. 

"We won't let you go," she said. 

Spender smiled. "You don't have any choice," he replied, and put the cds into his left hand with the vials; as soon as his hand was free, he reached into his pocket.

Mulder's hand began to tighten on the trigger.

"Mulder, shoot--"

_Boom_

Spender didn't have the time to blink, or react in any way. His head blew open, blood and brain matter splattering across the wall, the desk, the computer, across Mulder and Scully. And then he fell, his hand opening. Scully lunged forward, but she was too far away, and Mulder grabbed her, pulled her back, and they watched, helplessly, as the corpse of the man who had done so much damage collapsed in on itself, landing face-down on the floor, his left hand trapped beneath him.

In the pounding silence left by the blast, Scully heard, very clearly, the sound of glass breaking.

**+~+~+**

In the opened rear doorway stood Frohike, barely taller than the lab table, his face red with effort. As Scully watched, he took three steps into the room, jacking the shotgun as he moved.

"Frohike, no!" Mulder waved him back desperately, not moving from his position in the doorway, his hand braced across the opening to keep Scully out.

It was too late: Frohike slapped a button on the wall over to the lab table and squatted next to Spender. There was a sudden whisper of moving air, and a mechanical clunk. The rear door swung closed with a very final bang, and a red blinking light went on over each doorway. Frohike had turned on the spill containment system. 

"Frohike," whispered Scully, as if volume meant anything now. The vials were definitely broken: she could see a shard of glass on the floor next to Frohike's boot. The viruses were pooling under Spender already, some of them on the surface already maybe aerosolizing, depending on the solution they were in. Anyone who touched Spender would certainly be exposed.

Frohike looked up at Mulder and Scully hanging in the doorway. "Get out of here." His voice was harsh but clear. 

"No!" Mulder protested, but he didn't move. "Maybe it's not too late, maybe you can--" But his voice shook, and Scully realized that the inner lab door, the one they were standing in, was attempting to close. Mulder was blocking it with his body; once it was shut, there would be no exit for Frohike, not in time to escape the inferno that was coming.

The CDs, still pristine in their jewel cases, were trapped under the body. Scully could see the corner of one under Spender's shoulder. She grabbed Mulder's arm and pointed. "Oh, god, the CDs!"

Frohike moved fast. Faster than Scully would ever have believed he could.

He bent down, grabbed Spender's body, heaved it upwards and over to sprawl on its back in bloody disarray. The CDs were still there, on the floor, about eighteen inches from a wet puddle of clear fluid, rapidly turning pink in swirls on the cold white tile. 

The door was closing, despite Mulder's bulk. Scully added her strength to his, but it had no handles, no knob; it was just a heavy metal door, sliding inexorably along a baffled track. They couldn't stop it. The best they could do was slow it down. Air hissed over Scully's head, pumping into the room, part of the emergency containment system at work.

Frohike lurched forward and grabbed the jewel cases, but as he did so, one foot slipped in the blood and he stumbled down onto one knee. One knee in the bloody liquid on the floor.

Mulder groaned; the door was most of the way shut now, with only about twelve inches room to squeeze through.

"Melvin!" cried Scully, through the horror that clogged her throat. Not like this, oh God, not like this.

Frohike looked up at them, the CDs in his hand. "Nothing like going out a hero," he sallied, with a twisted smile. But his face was grey. 

And then he looked down at the CDs, and turned away, curling his arm around his right hand. As Mulder gasped and pulled out of the doorway, as the door began to cross the final space that would seal the room forever, Frohike frisbeed the disks perfectly, across the room, through the last inches of open door, to land with a clatter on the floor of the outer lab.

The door whined and slammed into place in the jamb. The hiss of the ventilation system continued, the red lights continued to blink.

Mulder grabbed the CDs with one hand, Scully's hand with the other, and ran.

**+~+~+**

The stairs back up were steeper, darker, more slippery. Mulder stumbled at the top of the first flight and Scully yanked him around the landing, only to trip herself on the first step of the next flight. Her hands stung from the fall. Four flights, gasping for breath around the grief choking her, and shamefully terrified for their own sakes. They had to get out _now_.

They broke out of the stairway onto the first floor. Nobody was in sight and the emergency lighting was flickering eerily. Mulder skipped a return the way they'd come and instead towed Scully down the hall at a dead run, heading for the emergency exit.

If there were troops out there waiting, they were dead, because Mulder didn't stop or even slow as he reached the door, just cannoned right through it. The door slammed back with a crash. There were no troops, just an empty parking lot, a field, and a fence in the distance, all barely illuminated by the rising moon reflected off the melting snow.

"Which way?" Scully gasped. She was all turned around. Where was the gate?

"There!" Mulder pointed off to the left. Past the parking lot, across another field, the fence curved, and there could be a gate there. "Come on, Scully, I think we're out of time." He set off at an implausibly slow jog. 

_Breathe_ , she told herself, and then followed him. They didn't jog for long, though; after a hundred yards or so they increased their speed, and then again as they neared the gate itself. By the time they found themselves outside the base, following the yellow line down the middle of a two-lane road, they were pelting along as fast as Scully could move.

Which was just as well; because over the pounding of her feet in the oh-so-heavy boots, and the wheeze of air through her lungs, she heard the unmistakable whine of an airplane.

"How--much--farther?" panted Mulder beside her.

"No--idea!" she responded. "Keep running!"

In later years many people asked Scully what it felt like, to witness the end of the Consortium, and the beginning of the post-Pulse restoration. They were inevitably disappointed, because all she could say was that first there was a roar as the plane passed overhead. And then, after a few seconds, there was a soft "whump", barely to be discerned over the sound of her own footfalls. And then, a second later, before they had time to turn around, there was a boom and a bright but momentary flash, not like an atomic test. More like the end of a big city fireworks display, where the boom sets off car alarms and the light dazzles, but then it's done.

Scully grabbed Mulder's hand and yanked him to a stop.

They stood in the middle of the road, no sign of life beyond the trees around them. They turned, still holding hands, and looked back the way they had come. 

There was a dull glow over the tree tops, as the facility burned, incinerating the deadly laboratories where the viruses were bred, and turning the architect of it all to ash, his bones buried in the rubble with those of his killer.

The light of the burning filtered through the trees, the flickering illumination of disaster averted reflected off Mulder's sweat-and-tear-streaked cheeks. Scully put her hands over her mouth and wept, finally.

It was done.

**+~+~+**

There was more after that, of course. There always is.

There were reunions with Charlie and Skinner and Gibson. There were messages to send, to politicians and military officials in Washington and Europe and Asia, and to a geneticist in southern Indiana. The last one was the hardest; and in the end, Mulder convinced Scully to let him write it for her. Linda would know that her Mel died a hero; but Byers wouldn't care about that.

Carvalho hadn't caved on them, and when the smoke cleared, he held both Baltimore and the military bases north of the city. The risk had paid off, but not without a price: fully a third of Carvalho's men had died, and not even Mulder could find it in him to weigh those deaths against Frohike's. There was no shortage of heroes, now.

Communications were fairly easy to re-initiate. Politics began again, and scheming, and somehow the center of gravity became Philadelphia instead of Washington, at least temporarily. And on the last day of March two former FBI agents found themselves in a rusting Toyota Corolla with a shaky transmission, on a two-lane highway north of Baltimore.

**+~+~+**

"Turn here," she said. Mulder blinked, but took the sharp right as directed.

When the radio crackled Scully answered it. "It's okay, Jack. We'll meet you there. Yes, I know the way. We won't be that long behind you." Mulder glanced at her but she didn't say anything.

It was a narrow driveway that climbed steeply after passing a gate standing ajar, and a sign with the battered announcement that they were entering Rocks State Park. The route climbed rapidly for over a mile, and ended in a large parking lot shaded by tall oaks and maples. Below, the snow was gone from the valleys, but there were still patches here caught in the shadows of the trees. Water from melting snow pooled everywhere on the asphalt.

Mulder pulled the truck into a slot at the north end of the lot, a dozen yards from a shabby white van. Snow was piled high under its bumper, and Mulder guessed it had been there since the Pulse. He hoped whoever had chosen to party in the park that October night had gotten home safely. It was a long walk to the nearest town, although there were dozens of houses along the river in the valley below.

The sky had cleared since the morning, and shafts of sunlight broke through the trees as Scully led him along a broad and well-trodden path into the woods. Scully still hadn't spoken, and he looked at her sidelong, navigating around tree roots and mud-puddles. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her neck, and she'd left her parka open in the relative warmth of the day. She looked attentive and thoughtful. 

After about a hundred yards the trail broke out of the trees, and Mulder found himself looking out over a wooded valley, the trees along the creek a hundred yards below them, their soft green branches swaying in the breeze. Woodsmoke curled from a dozen points along the valley to the east, and in the distance he could see a break in the trees, and some dark spots on green that might be horses or goats. Underfoot the soil had turned to granite, and he was forced to pay closer attention to his footing.

"Come on, Mulder."

Mulder realized that he wasn't just walking on granite: he was walking on a peninsula of granite, a promontory sticking out from the hill, with a drop on each side that was steep and getting steeper the further out they walked on the point. About twenty yards out, where the flat top of the ridge was no more than thirty feet wide, was a pair of granite blocks. Scully stepped carefully out and around, and scrambled on top of one of them.

Scully's seat had a depression worn in the top of its mostly-level surface, and so did the other. Keeping a cautious eye on the drop in front of them, Mulder climbed on top and sat. He dangled his legs and looked around.

It was a good view, and the boulder was surprisingly comfortable. "What is this place, Scully? Some lover's retreat from your college days?"

The corner of her mouth curled for a moment, but then she shook her head. Too bad, Mulder thought. He wouldn't mind seeing Scully smile more often; even the end of the "troubles", as people were calling it, hadn't done much to relieve her of the grey mood she'd carried since midwinter. "One of my med school housemates grew up in this area. We came here for a picnic once or twice."

"Bet it's nice on a warm day," he said, conscious of the chill of the stone leaking through his jeans.

"It is, but it's really popular with hikers and climbers, so you don't often get the place to yourself."

Mulder nodded. 

After a moment Scully sighed. "I don't know, I just didn't want to be there yet. I'm not ready." She looked worn, skin translucent with exhaustion and the bitter winter just past. As if the last eight months had consumed her from the inside, leaving just this pale imitation of the woman who had saved his life so many times. Who had saved them all.

"So. What happens next?" Mulder finally asked, instead of doing what he wanted to, which was to wrap Scully in a blanket and curl up with her under a tree until the heat and green of summer woke them.

"We go home." And then Scully smiled. It wasn't one of the desperate or hopeless smiles they'd all pasted on since the Pulse. Or one of the snide grins they'd shared when things went from really terrible to holy-god-it's-even-worse. 

It was the kind of smile he remembered from the early years of their partnership, from the night they stood in a graveyard in the rain, and she laughed with him in joyful astonishment at the outrageousness of the universe. It spread across her face like sunlight, like dawn coming up over the edge of the world.

They weren't done. They were never going to be done, because the world would never be what it had been before the Pulse. And there were still the black ships to worry about, out there somewhere. Wanting--something. 

But looking at her, he realized they would figure it out, with Jack's help, and Gibson's. The Consortium was gone, and the aliens would have to deal with the real leaders of humanity. No more shadowed treachery behind closed doors, no more hostages, no more experiments.

Mulder reached out, stretching precariously across the narrow canyon between their rocky perches. Her hand was cool, the skin rough and dry as he wrapped it in his own. She turned to look at him, and the sun chose that moment to come out from behind a cloud and throw a beam of light across his face, blinding him.

Maggie was dead, and Frohike, Ari, Langly--so many others. But Scully was alive, and Charlie, and Skinner. They had hope, and it was springtime finally.

Scully leaned out as well, balancing on the edge of the abyss, and squeezed his hand tightly. "Yes," she repeated, louder. "We go home."

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I can possibly thank everyone who cheered on this series for so many years. But a few names deserve acknowledgement. The original Wartime gang: Maria Nicole, Marasmus, and Fialka. Yes Virginia, all of you: you know who you are. And of course the old pointy-stick gang from Scullyfic, particularly Jean and Sarah. 
> 
> Feedback in whatever form is most gratefully accepted.
> 
> 2014: This posting is dedicated to Sabine, without whom the story, and the series, would never have existed.


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